Part Two talks about an USA Today op-ed that demonizes critics of health care "reform" for demonizing! Please send any comments on today's TN&Vs to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you'd like, follow me at www.twitter.com/daveha.

Okay, Congress is back at work on health care "reform." With respect to abortion and rationing, I trust you are checking the latest from NRLC at www.nrlactioncenter.com and http://powellcenterformedicalethics.blogspot.com on a daily basis.

Led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mi.) in recent days 31 House Democrats have signed letters urging Pelosi to remove the pro-abortion components or allow a vote on the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to do so. The New York Times reported this morning that Pelosi's office had confirmed she had agreed to meet with Stupak today "to discuss his proposals for the first time." That and $1.21 will buy you a small cup of coffee, so we shall see what we shall see.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mt., right, talks with Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., left. Sen, Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., is in the middle.

That same Times story by David Kirkpatrick reported that pro-abortion President Barack Obama had finally called Stupak ten days ago. Stupak said, "We got his attention, which we never had before."

But, alas, there was nothing in the story that indicated Obama was doing anything other than offering his usual rhetorical feint–that any new health policy would "not provide federal money to pay for elective abortions," a torturous verbal construction that leaves the door wide open to doing just that. It is significant that "White House officials have declined to spell out what he means," Kirkpatrick reported.

Two other quick points, beyond that irreducible fact that "Just 41% of likely voters say they favor the reform proposed by President Obama and Democrats," according to Rasmussen, while "56% of respondents are opposed." It is encouraging to see that after the Times gave the [Democratic] Party line (a bookkeeping ploy), the story immediately adds, "But opponents say that is not good enough, because only a line on an insurers' accounting ledger would divide the federal money from the payments for abortions. The subsidies would still help people afford health coverage that included abortion."

However that is just one of the problems with Sen. Baucus' bill, which is getting the lion's share of attention this week. The bill also contains provisions that could be used to launch future pro-abortion regulatory mandates, and problem also found in the "Affordable Health Choices Act," a bill that came out of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee last July, to name just one other.

For example, NRLC has carefully rebutted pro-abortion assurances that a "public option" would not pay for abortions. That conclusion was given addition weight earlier this month when FactCheck.org concluded, "Under Democratic legislation now before Congress, the 'public option' ... could cover all abortions if the administration chooses and as Obama once promised. Private insurance plans purchased with the help of federal subsidies to low- and moderate-income workers also could cover all abortions."

Why is this bogus pro-abortion assurance so important? Earlier this month Public Opinion Strategies conducted a national poll which found that 43 percent of registered voters said they would be "less likely" to support the president's health plan "if the government paid for abortions," and only 8 percent said "more likely."

In closing, and by way of clarification, the story's opening sentence--"As if it were not complicated enough, the debate over health care in Congress is becoming a battlefield in the fight over abortion"--seems to imply that the abortion controversy is like the caboose on the health care "reform" train, and late arriving at that. Nothing could be further from the truth.

NRLC has been warning for months and months and that all the proposals contained far-reaching pro-abortion provisions. As has been patiently explained repeatedly at www.nrlactioncenter.com,

"Despite public statements by President Obama that 'no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion,' all of the major bills under consideration would put the federal government into the business of subsidizing elective abortion on a huge scale -- which would be a drastic break from longstanding federal policy."

Any thoughts you have on Part One or Part Two, please send them to daveandrusko@gmail.com.